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Descriptive Summary

Creator:

Schneiderman, Rose, 1882-1972

Source
- dnr:

Schneiderman, Rose, 1882-1972

Source
- dnr:

Caylor, George Nathan, 1885-1973

Title:

Rose Schneiderman Papers

Dates [inclusive]:

1909-1964

Dates [bulk]:

1909-1920

Abstract:

Rose Schneiderman (1882-1972), Jewish labor organizer, socialist, suffragist, campaigner
for protective legislation for women, and leader of the Women's Trade Union League(WTUL).
Schneiderman played a leading role in the New York City garment workers upsurge of
1909-14 and was founder and president of International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
(ILGWU), Local 62, Dry Goods Workers. After losing her bid for the presidency of the
New York WTUL, she became in 1914 a national organizer for the ILGWU but, dissatisfied
with the place of women in the Union, returned to the WTUL in 1916, and became head
of the NY WTUL in 1918, and later the national WTUL, holding both posts throughout
the remainder of the WTUL's existence (through 1950). After World War I her focus
shifted to legislative reform (with the notable exception of her opposition to the
Equal Rights Amendment), and she drew close to the Democratic party and established
a friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. Schneiderman served on the National Recovery
Administration's labor advisory board in 1934, and as Secretary of the New York State
Department of Labor 1933-44. Her autobiography, All for One, was published in 1967. This collection contains correspondence (leading feminists
are represented), a set of letters from Pauline Newman, autobiographical typescripts,
speeches, clippings, minutes, reports, and other documents representing Schneiderman's
activity in WTUL, in public service, and in the women's suffrage movement.

Rose Schneiderman was born April 6, 1882, in the village of Saven, Poland, the first
of four children. Like many Eastern European Orthodox Jews in the late nineteenth
century, her parents, Samuel and Deborah (Rothman) Schneiderman, worked in the sewing
trades to support their impoverished family, at first in Saven and then in the industrial
city of Khelm. When Rose was eight they emigrated to New York City's Lower East Side.
Her father's death there in the winter of 1892 left the family dependent upon relatives
and charity. Rose and her brothers spent over a year in Jewish orphanages before their
mother could reunite them.

Rose's education was limited and frequently interrupted. In Poland she began her schooling
at the village chedar, a Hebrew school traditionally open only to boys. For several
years she attended Russian schools. In the United States, to her disappointment, she
had to leave school for work after the ninth grade. Throughout her life she continued
a program of self education and was an omnivorous reader.

Rose Schneiderman's first job, at thirteen, was as a department store cash girl at
$2.25 a week. Three years later, in 1898, she found a better paying position as a
sewing machine operator in a cap factory. Despite the oppressive conditions that characterized
both retail stores and clothing factories in the late nineteenth century, her interest
in trade unionism did not develop immediately. Like most young women wage earners
of that day, she regarded her time in industry as temporary, to be given up for marriage
or a teaching career. As she recalled in her autobiography, "We had no idea that there
was a union in our industry and that women could join it. Nor did we have a full realization
of the hardships we were undergoing."

Two relationships seem to have changed this view. In 1902 her family moved briefly
to Montreal, where close friendship with a socialist family stirred her interest in
radical politics and trade unionism. Soon after her return to the'New York cap factory
in 1903, she joined another new friend, Bessie Braut, a young anarchist, in organizing
the women in their shop. They applied for a charter to the United Cloth Hat and Cap
Makers Union, a vigorous Jewish socialist organization, but the union, reluctant to
take women members, told them to come back after they had succeeded in organizing
twenty five women a task they accomplished within a few days. The union then chartered
its first women's local.

Schneiderman quickly emerged as a promising organizer and labor. leader, particularly
during a long and bitter citywide capmakers' strike in 1905. Her local, largely under
her direction, rapidly grew to several hundred members. She was elected its secretary
and one of its delegates to the New York City Central Labor Union. Previously a quiet,
introverted, often unhappy young woman, she now came into her own. She joined the
Socialist party and, in 1905, the New York Women's Trade Union League, the organization
she was later to call "the most important influence in my life."

The New York League, recently organized and on the lookout for promising women trade
unionists, had sported Schneiderman's organizing work and invited her to its meetings
as early as 1904. Although hesitant at first about an organization containing so many
upperclass women, she made her decision to join and quickly became a leading member.
By 1908 she was the League's vice president and one of its most effective organizers.
In that year a stipend provided by Irene Lewisohn, one of the League's wealthy supporters,
enabled her to give up factory employment and work for the League, meanwhile continuing
her education at the Rand School of Social Science.

During the tumultuous years of the general strikes in the garment trades from 1909
through 1914, Rose Schneiderman became well known in trade union circles for her abilities
as an organizer, public speaker, and union administrator. As the League's East Side
organizer, she helped found numerous women's unions, primarily among Jewish immigrants.
She was active in the 1909 general strike of the shirtwaist makers, the "Uprising
of the Twenty Thousand," and served on the shirtwaist makers' union's executive board.
She also established, virtually single handedly, a small union of white goods workers
that became Local 62 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. As its first
president and organizer, she led it carefully from its precarious beginnings in 1908
through its general strike in 1913.

Friction with Melinda Scott, the League's organizer for English speaking women, who
had defeated her in the contest for president of the League in 1914, led Schneiderman
to resign her League positions at the end of that year and become a national organizer
for the I LGWU. She spent a year in the job, traveling throughout the East and Midwest
to organize shirtwaist makers, but found working for a male dominated trade union
frustrating and unfulfilling. The experience seems to have deepened her commitment
to the Women's Trade Union League and to the woman's movement generally. Throughout
the second decade of the twentieth century she was an active suffragist, and throughout
her career she did not hesitate to voice criticism of union policies that indicated
insensitivity to women's concerns. She became president of the New York League in
1918, and in 1926 accepted the presidency of the National WTUL as well, although the
New York League remained her primary focus.

The years after World War I saw changes in Rose Schneiderman's activities and priorities.
Although, under New York League auspices, she continued to organize women workers
in New York City, she devoted increasing time and energy to administrative and legislative
matters. As president of the New York League, she channeled much of her energy into
lobbying at the state capitol for protective legislation for women, particularly eight
hour and minimum wage laws. She also gave vigorous opposition to the new Equal Rights
Amendment proposed by the National Woman's Party.

Her political orientation also changed during these years. Earlier a Socialist, she
helped organize the state Labor party in 1919 and was its candidate for U.S. Senator
on the Farmer Labor ticket of 1920. So strong was her reputation at this time as a
political radical that she was assailed by conservative groups as "Red Rose" and was
one of the individuals investigated by New York's Lusk Committee. Over the next few
years, however, the decline of the Socialist and Farmer Labor parties and her friendship
with Democratic activists within the New York WTUL Iike Nancy Cook and especially
Eleanor Roosevelt (who joined the League late in 1922) drew her toward that party.
She was pleased when the Democratic governor, Al Smith, appointed her a state delegate
to a child labor conference in Washington in 1924. Though she campaigned that fall
for the Progressive presidential candidate, La Follette, she also voted for Smith.
Before long she had become a staunch Democrat.

Her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt soon extended to Franklin as well, during visits
at Hyde Park, Campobello, and later at the Governor's Mansion. The friendship greatly
in fluenced Schneiderman's public career. She in turn, through their conversations,
gave Roosevelt in insight into the labor movement,and the problems of women workers
that did much to shape the future president's outlook on labor relations.

During his first, presidential year Roosevelt appointed Schneiderman to the National
Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board one of the first women he named to
a high post. As the Board's only woman member, she was regularly consulted on women's
issues. Her appointment lapsed with the NRA itself in 1935. In 1937 Governor Herbert
Lehman of New York appointed her secretary (the second ranking officer) of the state's
Department of Labor, an office she held until 1944.

Throughout these years Rose Schneiderman had continued as president of both the New
York and the National Women's Trade Union Leagues. Her resignation from the first
post, in 1949, marked her real retirement from public life; her presidency of the
National League came to an end when it disbanded in 1950. While living quietly in
Manhattan, she completed her autobiography, All for One, written in collaboration
with Lucy Goldthwaite; it was published in 1967. Rose Schneiderman died at the Jewish
Home and Hospital for the Aged in New York City on August 11, 1972.

- End of Dye essay -

For Rose Schneiderman's career in the Women's Trade Union League, a more comprehensive
source than her own papers is the records of the New York WTUL, also part of the WTUL
microfilm edition. These include minutes of regular and executive board meetings in
which she participated, from 1905 to 1955; her correspondence as president of the
New York League from 1918 to 1949; and some of her correspondence as president of
the National League. The correspondence files, particularly in later years, also include
occasional personal letters, and they throw light on other aspects of Schneiderman's
career, such as her post World War I evolution from socialist to Democrat.

Other portions of the microfilm edition contain scattered Schneiderman letters: the
papers of Margaret Dreier Robins, Mary Anderson, and Leonora O'Reilly, and the National
WTUL Papers at the Schlesinger Library. There are also Schneiderman letters in the
National WTUL Records at the Library of Congress, which have been microfilmed as part
of this edition.

Manuscript collections elsewhere that contain Schneiderman letters include the Brookwood
Labor College Records at the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University;
the Herbert H. Lehman Papers, School of International Affairs, Columbia University;
the Eleanor Roosevelt Personal Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New
York; and the Pauline Newman Papers, Schlesinger Library. There is a brief chapter
on Schneiderman in the unpublished autobiography of her old friend George N. Caylor
(originally Cohen), "If Memory Serves Me Right," in the Caylor Papers at the Tamiment
Library, New York University. The records of the National Recovery Administration
in the National . Archives (Record Group 9) include the office files of Rose Schneiderman
and other members of the Labor Advisory Board. Her official correspondence as secretary
of the New York State Department of Labor seems not to have survived.

The basic source for Schneiderman's life is her autobiography, All for One (1967), written in collaboration with Lucy Goldthwaite. See also her early autobiographical
article, "A Cap Maker's Story," Independent, LVIII (Apr. 27, 1905), 935-938. Also, Gary Endelman, "Solidarity Forever: Rose Schneiderman
and the Women's Trade Union League" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, 1978).
Schneiderman is viewed in different contexts in Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, A Generation of Women: Education in the Lives of Progressive Reformers (1979), and Pat L. C. Schbiten, "Militant Women for Economic Justice: The Persuasion
of Mary Harris Jones, Ella Reeve Bloor, Rose Pastor Stokes, Rose Schneiderman, and
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn" (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1979), and Annelise
Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire (1995).

Chronology

Apr 6, 1882

Born in Saven, Poland.

1890

Came with parents to United States; family settled in New York City's Lower East Side.

1892-1893

Spent a year in Jewish orphanages after father's death.

1895

Left public school after ninth grade to become a cash girl in a department store.

1898

Became sewing machine operator in a cap factory.

1903

Helped organize the women in her shop into a local of the capmakers' union, thus starting
her labor career.

1905

A leader in citywide capmakers' strike; joined New York Women's Trade Union League.

ca. 1906

Elected vice president of New York WTUL.

1908

Left factory work to become an organizer for the WTUL.

1909-1914

A leader in shirtwaist and other general strikes of NewYork garment workers.

Scope and Content Note

Series I, Correspondence

The first series, Correspondence, is on the first microfilm reel (R-7099/113), series
II, III, and IV are on the second microfilm reel (R-7099/114). The overall dates are
1909 through 1964, but the greatest concentration falls in the years before World
War I. The letters for those years deal with personal and family matters, trade union
and Women's Trade Union League affairs, woman suffrage, and, more briefly, socialism.
They give some insight into the day to day life and concerns of an early twentieth
century woman labor organizer. Much of the correspondence is from friends in the Women's
Trade Union League, the labor movement, and the suffrage campaign. Through such letters
it is possible to glimpse the female network that sustained Schneiderman and other
women reformers and unionists in the male dominated labor movement.

Series II-IV

These series are more miscellaneous, fragmentary and not always well arranged. The
microfilm reel is divided into two sections, Part 1 and Part 2, in each of which the
frames are numbered separately. They are made up of a variety of largely miscellaneous
items, both personal and official, and a more detailed description can be found in
the container list.

Note: In filming these three series, some groups of material have been omitted (as
described below), i.e.: a selection of material from the folders comprising these
series was filmed in a sequence thought to be most useful to researchers, but one
different from the arrangement of these materials in their folders.

Omitted materials: personal memorabilia of lesser significance, such as White House
invitations, Christmas cards, and dinner menus; a folder of photographs subsequently
separated and accessioned as the Rose Schneiderman Photographs (Tamiment Photographs
10) that includes some women labor leaders of the early twentieth century; and a typed
final draft of Rose Schneiderman's autobiography. Also omitted were such National
Women's Trade Union League items as minutes of executive board meetings and convention
proceedings, since more complete files are to be found in other portions of the present
microfilm edition.

Series IV was origianlly subdivided into subseries A - E. The items that constituted
subseries B-E were integrated into other folders after microfilming.

Series V, Pauline Newman Letters (not microfilmed)

These letters dated 1910-1912 are from Rose Schneiderman's close friend Pauline Newman,
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union organizer and official. It was formerly
closed at the time of microfilming and therefore was not filmed.

Arrangement

Correspondence folders are arranged chronologically other series are generally arranged
alphabetically.

Organized into five series:

Series I: Correspondence
Series II: Special Topics
Series III: Biographical and Personal
Series IV: Newspaper Clippings
Series V: Pauline Newman Letters

Please note that the order of the materials on the microfilm reels is different than
the order of the original materials, as is described in the container list.

Correspondence folders are arranged chronologically other series are generally arranged
alphabetically.

Organized into five series:

Series I: Correspondence
Series II: Special Topics
Series III: Biographical and Personal
Series IV: Newspaper Clippings
Series V: Pauline Newman Letters

Please note that the order of the materials on the microfilm reels is different than
the order of the original materials, as is described in the container list.

Subject Topics

Administrative Information

Custodial History

Donated to the Tamiment Institute Library in 1962. The library was acquired by New
York University the following year, and the papers were transferred at that time.
The accession number associated with this gift is 1962.010. A second donation of materials
was made by Rose Schneiderman's friend George N. Caylor in 1965, when Schneiderman
moved into a nursing home. In the 1970s, Rose Schneiderman's close friend Pauline
Newman removed a number of her letters to Schneiderman from the collection. Photocopies
of many of these letters were retained.

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Tamiment Library has no information about copyright ownership for this collection
and is not authorized to grant permission to publish or reproduce materials from it.
Materials in this collection, which were created in 1909 to 1964, are expected to
enter the public domain in 2043.

Papers of the Women's Trade Union League and its Principal Leaders contains 14 collections on 131 reels of microfilm, of which the Rose Schneiderman
Papers constitute collection VI (2 reels of microfilm).

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Container List

Series I: Correspondence. (Reel 7099/113: Frames 1-914)

Scope and Contents note

: Except for a restricted group of letters from Pauline Newman and a few letters in
the Special Topics series on Reel 2, this reel includes the entire correspondence
portion of the Rose Schneiderman Papers. It consists of letters (plus occasional telegrams
and postcards) written to Schneiderman, with carbon copies of some of her replies.

Subseries A: Correspondence 1909-1914 (Reel 7099/113: Frames 1-366)

Scope and Contents note

Personal rather than official in nature, it includes some forty letters touching upon
the affairs of the Women's Trade Union League, from such correspondents as Alice Bean,
Josephine Casey, Mary Dreier, Stella Franklin, Alice Henry, Helen Marot, Agnes Nestor,
and Leonora O'Reilly. Schneiderman's participation in the suffrage movement finds
reflection in scattered letters from Alva E. Belmont, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Inez
Milholland, Anna Howard Shaw, and Harriet Taylor Upton. Upton's letter of July 17,
1912, and one from M. A. Sherwood, July 15, testify warmly to Schneiderman's effectiveness
in the Ohio suffrage campaign of that year. A few letters, especially those of Joseph
E. Cohen, touch upon socialist matters. Other correspondents include the labor leaders
John Dyche and Hugh Frayne and Florence Simms of the YWCA.

Scope and Contents note

Correspondence in the second group, 1915-1964, is more diffuse and has more of the
character of personal memorabilia. With three exceptions, each year is represented
by no more than half a dozen items; some years are skipped altogether. The exceptions
are large clusters of letters and telegrams sent on three occasions: in 1937, at the
time of Schneiderman's appointment as New York State Secretary of Labor; in 1943,
in observance of the twenty fifth anniversary of her presidency of the New York Women's
Trade Union League; and in 1949, when she retired from that post. Corrpspondents in
this portion of the reel include Margaret Dreier Robins (see esoecially June 24, 1922,
June 14, 1943, and Schneiderman's reply of July 7, 1943), Mary Dreier, Leonora O'Reilly,
Elisabeth Christman (including several letters in 1950 describing the closing down
of the National WTUL headquarters), Frances Perkins, the English labor leader Margaret
Bondfield, Franklin D. Roosevelt (several letters during his governorship), and Eleanor
Roosevelt. On trade union affairs, Schneiderman in a letter of Feb. 6, 1916 to Benjamin
Schlesinger submits her resignation as an ILGWU organizer. (See also her letter to
Abe Baroff, Dec 1, 1916, on Reel 2, frames 262-263.) A letter from Max Zaritsky, June
7, 1934, announces her election to the general executive board of her own union, the
United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers. Several letters in 1938-1939 concern the
National Women's Committee for a Leon Blum Colony in Palestine, of which Schneiderman
was chair.

Container 1

Container 2

Title

Date

Box: 1

Folder : 5

Correspondence

1915-1917

Box: 1

Folder : 6

Correspondence

1918-1922

Box: 1

Folder : 7

Correspondence

1924, 1926

Box: 1

Folder : 8

Correspondence

1929-1932

Box: 1

Folder : 9

Correspondence

1933-1936

Box: 1

Folder : 10

Correspondence

1937

Box: 1

Folder : 11

Correspondence

1938-1941

Box: 1

Folder : 12

Correspondence

1943-1947

Box: 1

Folder : 13

Correspondence

1949-1950

Box: 1

Folder : 14

Correspondence

1951, 1956-1957, 1960

Subseries C: Correspondence, Undated. (Reel 7099/113: Frames 786-914)

Scope and Contents note

The undated letters are arranged in a rough chronological sequence as suggested by
the content. Included area few letters from WTUL figures, including Mary Dreier, Mabel
Gillespie, and Melinda Scott. (Undated items for a particular year are included with
the correspondence for that year, either before or after the dated items.)

Series II: Special Topics. (Reel 7099/114, Part 1: Frames 1-782)

Scope and Contents note

(Reel 2, Part 1: Frames 1-782)

Subseries A: Women's Trade Union League.

Scope and Contents note

Women's Trade Union League (Reel 2, Part 1: Frames 1-186): The items are divided,
somewhat haphazardly, into three groups: general material (frames 1-60), speeches
and articles by Rose Schneiderman (frames 63-157), and miscellaneous (frames 158-186).
Included in the first group are: typed copies of reports in the Chicago Union Labor
Advocate of the founding meetings of the National WTUL in 1903 (by one of the participants,
Ellen Lindstrom), of the national "convention" of 1907 (actually a small conference
held during the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor), and of early
meetings of the Chicago and Boston branches; a typed report by Rose Schneiderman of
her work as organizer for the New York WTUL in 1908-1909; minutes of a meeting of
the Law Enforcement Committee of the New York WTUL in 1913; and the script of the
League's surprise party for Schneiderman in 1943. In the second group (speeches and
articles), each ofthe first two speeches lacks page 1. In a speech or article at the
end of the group Schneiderman looks back over the fifty-year history of the New York
WTUL after its decision to disband.

Container 1

Container 2

Title

Date

Box: 2

Folder : 1

WTUL Training School

1913-1938

Box: 2

Folder : 2

WTUL Clippings and Articles

1904-1950

Box: 2

Folder : 3

WTUL Resolutions and Minutes, Members of Executive Committee

1903-1919

Box: 2

Folder : 4

WTUL Executive Board Meeting Minutes, Letters and Finances

1911-1950

Box: 2

Folder : 5

WTUL Speeches, Schneiderman

1906-1955

Box: 2

Folder : 6

WTUL Miscellaneous Reports, etc.

1908-1933

Box: 2

Folder : 7

WTUL: Luncheon, 1949; 25th Anniversary Dinner, 1943

1943-1949

Box: 2

Folder : 8

WTUL: Catalogs of Exhibits

1935-1951

Subseries B: Woman Suffrage.

Scope and Contents note

Woman Suffrage (Reel 2, Part 1: Frames 187-233): Includes two speeches, presumably
by Rose Schneiderman, given at a "suffrage school" in Washington, DC, in 1913.

Container 1

Container 2

Title

Date

Box: 2

Folder : 9

Woman's Suffrage

1913-1916

Box: 2

Folder : 9A

Woman's Suffrage (not microfilmed): Flier for a Series of Public Speaking Engagements
by Schneiderman

undated

Subseries C: First International Congress of Working Women.

Scope and Contents note

First International Congress of Working Women (Reel 2, Part 1: Frames 234-243): Contains
several documents relating to the WTUL's efforts to convene this Congress, held in
Washington DC in October 1919.

Container 1

Container 2

Title

Date

Box: 2

Folder : 10

First International Congress of Working Women

1919

Subseries D: International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

Scope and Contents note

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (Reel 2, Part 1: Frames 244-279): Consists
largely of minutes of the Waist Makers Conference in New York City, 1910-11, of which
Schneiderman was secretary.

Container 1

Container 2

Title

Date

Box: 2

Folder : 11

International Ladies' Garment Workers Union

1910-1911

Subseries E: New York State Department of Labor. Industrial Board. Committee on Sanitation
and Comfort.

Scope and Contents note

New York State Department of Labor. Industrial Board. Committee on Sanitation and
Comfort (Reel 2, Part 1: Frames 280-450): Includes letters to Schneiderman and other
members from the committee's head, Pauline Goldmark, together with reports, drafts
of sanitary regulations, and related papers. (See also letters on Reel 1, frames 356
and 363.)

Container 1

Container 2

Title

Date

Box: 2

Folder : 12

New York State Department of Labor. Industrial Board. Committee on Sanitation and
Comfort

1913-1914

Subseries F: Labor Advisory Board, National Recovery Administration.

Scope and Contents note

Labor Advisory Board, National Recovery Administration (Reel 2, Part 1: Frames 451-661):
ALoosely organized, includes three Schneiderman speeches, some correspondence, various
internal memoranda and minutes, and an unsigned typescript history of the board.